Williamson and Graham

When Williamson arrived in Paris in August 1846, the ideas of Gerhardt and Laurent had reached maturity, but they were not much respected, either in France or internationally, and neither man had proper employment. It is clear from subsequent surviving correspondence that Williamson formed a close personal and professional bond with Laurent (who was in Paris when Williamson arrived there) and with Gerhardt (who arrived from Montpellier in March 1848). He was wholeheartedly converted to the reformed chemistry they had outlined. Williamson s unconstrained individualism, imaginative approach to theoretical innovation, and youthful confidence seem well matched to Laurent s fecund molecular theorizing, as well as to Gerhardt s skepticism and severity toward hypotheses. 

Relatively little historical work has been done on this major figure and his importance to the development of nineteenth-century chemistry has not been sufficiently appreciated. See DSB Partington, History (1964), 265-75, 729-39 Swords, Graham (1973) Stanley, Graham (1979) and Stanley, Making of a Chemist (1987). 

Graham s other early landmark publication was on the three different phosphoric acids known at that time. Berzelius had suggested that this was simply a case of triple isomerism whose ultimate cause was 

Thorpe, Essays (1911), 264 Smith, in Graham, Researches, v, xv and Swords, Graham, passim. The best and most thorough discussion of Graham s views on atomic motion is in the fine but unfortunateiy poorly accessible dissertation by Staniey, Graham, 347ff. 

The Graham-Liebig work on polybasic acids added a fifth strand to the four interconnected developments discussed in the last section—chlorine substitution, type theory, a modified radical theory, and the hydrogen theory of acidity—all of which worked against electrochemical-dualist theory. A molecule of a polybasic acid, in Liebig s hands, was depicted as a molecular entity that could hold together additional molecular components it formed the hub, as it were, of a more complex molecule. It appears that Williamson likewise saw Graham s work on phosphoric acids in this way, for in an obituary of 

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In chapter 1 we noted the probable influence of the Common-Sense school on Couper s fellow Scots/English chemists Williamson and Graham. In reference to the 1826-27 atomistic formulas of the Glaswegian chemist Thomas Clark, W. V. Farrar has seen "a climate of thought in Scotland favourable to naive structuralism," and argued for a culmination of this trend in the formulas of Couper and Alexander Crum Brown. More broadly, Richard Olson has explored the influence of Scottish Common-Sense philosophy on British physics. This philosophical school arose in Thomas Reid s opposition to the skeptical writings... 

V01 E.L. Venturini, B. Morosin, R.A. Graham, D.L. Williamson, and F.L. Williams, Sandia National Laboratories Report No. SAND87-0315, June,... 

All of this will be detailed in subsequent chapters, but what is important for present purposes is to note that Laurent, Gerhardt, Liebig, Dumas, Graham, and others had already assembled by ca. 1840 nearly every element of chemical theory that would provide the necessary preconditions for the revolution to come. Ironically, as we have seen, Liebig and Dumas retreated fully from the theoretical dialectic, simultaneously and independently, just about that time. Laurent and Gerhardt attempted to complete the revolution whose signs were so clearly in the air, but they failed. It would be Williamson and others influenced by him who would succeed. 

Graham, R.A., Morosin, B., Horie, Y., Venturini, E.L., Boslough, M., Carr, M.J., and Williamson, D.L., Chemical Synthesis Under High Pressure Shock Loading, in Shock Waves in Condensed Matter (edited by Gupta, Y.M.), Plenum, New York, 1986, pp. 693-711. 

We sincerely thank a number of colleagues at the University of Guelph for their support, noting especially T. Graham, P Sathasivam, and A. Oakes. Access to the Snake Hill material was through our colleagues at Archaeological Services, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, with thanks to R. Williamson. 

Lespieau s view was that organic chemistry must make use of physical methods and of physical chemistry and that the experimental work of Graham, Williamson, Wurtz, and, more recently, Raoult had confirmed the superiority of the atomic hypothesis over chemical equivalents. As for the meaning of the constitutional (structural, developed) formula,... 

We thank our colleagues Drs. Sam Graham, Jay Gibbs, and Nancy Kohl for their valuable help during the course of this research program. The authors thank Dr. Joanne Williamson for giving us liberty to use certain unpublished data. We also thank all our colleagues who have coauthored research publications on FPTase. 

Graham, Williamson wrote of this early work, "One would fancy that Graham had been acquainted with the modern doctrines of types and of polybasic acids. . concept of polybasic molecules was gener-... 

Graham and Williamson had much in common, including their... 

Sir) Henry Enfield Roscoe (London, 7 January 1833-Leatherhead, Surrey, 18 December 1915), who came of a famous Liverpool family, was first educated there, then studied at University College, London, under Graham and Williamson (1848-53), and then with Bunsen in Heidelberg on the photochemical union of hydrogen and chlorine (from 1855, see p, 721). He succeeded E. Frankland as professor in Owens College, Manchester (later the University of Manchester) in 1857, private laboratory in... 

We are indebted to the following lecturers who reviewed early drafts of the chapters for the second edition Dr David L. Cooper, University of Liverpool (Chapters 2 and 14), Professor Mike Williamson, University of Sheffield (Chapters 21 and 23), Professor James Hanson, University of Sussex (Chapter 20), Professor Laurence Harwood, University of Reading (Chapter 20), Professor Robin Waldi, University of Reading (Chapters 6 and 16), Professor Howard Maskill, University of Newcastle (Chapter 20), Dr Norman Billingham, University of Sussex (Chapter 22), Dr Jon Nield, Queen Mary College, (Chapter 23), Professor Jon Cooper, University College London (Chapter 23), Dr Duncan Bruce, University of York (Chapter 22), Professor David Mankoff, University of Pennsylvania (Chapter 25), Dr Philip Walker, University of Surrey and Dr Eli Zysman-Colman (University of St Andrews (Chapter 22), and Dr Graham Patrick (Chapter 25), University of the West of Scotland. 

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